The 2020 apotheosis of President Eisenhower’s warning in 1959
Three years after the United States military invaded Iraq, the American journalist, Thomas Ricks, published a review of the misadventure titled Fiasco. My father was in the Marine Corps and I have long been interested in its history, so I was particularly interested in the book’s account of the First and Second Battles of Fallujah in 2004, which were fought by Marine units.
By the time I read the book in 2007, four years had elapsed since the 2003 invasion, and the American people were suffering from a severe case of Iraq War Fatigue.
Most of us were sick of the mess and just wanted it to go away. Around the time I read the book, U.S. forces were being withdrawn from Iraq—a process that would be completed in 2011.
Three years after the withdraw, ISIS forces invaded Iraq and ultimately occupied about 40% of the country before themselves withdrawing.
